Paul Groot

Paul Groot is professor of astronomy and co-founder of the Department of Astrophysics of the Radboud University Nijmegen. and holds a SARChI Chair at the University of Cape Town and the South African Astronomical Observatory. His areas of expertise are ultra-compact binaries and transient sources, which are the strongest, known sources of gravitational waves emission. The research is focused on discovering and characterizing these elusive systems and using them as a probe to understand fundamental physics. For this he uses wide field surveys, such as those from the MeerLICHT and BlackGEM telescopes he PI-s, as well as the IPHAS/UVEX/EGAPS surveys of the Galactic Plane.

He has an active interest in short transients in the Universe: sources that appear and disappear within a few days. Triggered by his discovery of optical afterglows to Gamma-ray bursts, he is intrigued by the question what else varies in the night at these time scales. To answer this question he was a member of the Palomar Transient Factory collaboration, is part of the Virgo collaboration for gravitational wave detection and he is the PI on both the MeerLICHT telescope as well as the BlackGEM array for the detection of optical counterparts to gravitational wave sources.

To enable his science Paul Groot has a keen interest in instrument development. He was Dutch Co-PI and Project Scientist on the hugely successful X-Shooter spectrograph on the VLT telescope of the European Southern Observatory, and he is the PI on both the MeerLICHT as well as the BlackGEM telescopes. He is also keenly interested in low-cost, low-weight very large aperture optical spectrographic telescopes.

Paul Groot received his PhD 'cum laude' at the University of Amsterdam in 1999, was a CfA Fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, USA, and came to Nijmegen in 2002 to start the new department of Astrophysics, together with Jan Kuijpers. In 2009 he was elected as a member of the Young Academy (Jonge Akademie) of the Royal Netherlands Academy for Sciences (KNAW) and in 2017 as a member of the Royal Holland Academy of Science (KHMW).

He is the discoverer of optical counterparts to gamma-ray bursts and is part of the LIGO-Virgo team that detected the first gravitational waves through laser-interferometry. For his work he was co-recipient of the EU Decartes Prize, the Special Breakthrough Prize in Physics and the Gruber Prize in Cosmology

Education

• PhD (cum laude) University of Amsterdam (1995 — 1999)
• M.Sc University of Amsterdam (1989 — 1997)

Companies

• Professor of Astronomy University of Cape Town (2018)
• Professor of Astrophysics Radboud University (2006)
• Chair, Board of Directors NOVA, Netherlands Research School for Astronomy (2012 — 2017)
• Chair, Department of Astrophysics Radboud University (2006 — 2016)
• Member Young Academy of Sciences, Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences KNAW (2009 — 2014)
• Director of Education Mathematics, Physics and Astronomy Radboud University (2012 — 2013)
• Research Associate/Visiting Professor California Institute of Technology (2011 — 2012)
• Associate Professor of Astrophysics Radboud University Nijmegen (2003 — 2006)
• Assistant Professor of Astrophysics Radboud University (2002 — 2003)